LAT: Putin Indicates He Won't Stay in Kremlin Past 2008
In a carefully screened Q&A, the leader says he doesn't want to make any 'abrupt changes' to the constitution, which forbids another term.
By Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writer
MOSCOW — In a televised town hall meeting that featured his most pointed declaration yet about Russia's political future, President Vladimir V. Putin on Tuesday rebuffed the idea of holding on to the presidency past 2008 and promised there was "no danger of a return to a monopoly on power."
But outside the range of the cameras in Putin's coast-to-coast appearance, a critic of the government who tried to pose a question was shoved to the ground and had two of his teeth knocked out. His wife, a human rights activist, was also injured.
In the end, few of the more than 1 million questions posed to the Russian president by telephone, e-mail, text message and live television linkup made it past the careful screening in what appeared to be the opening salvo of an election campaign in which Putin insisted he would not be a candidate.
For months, the Russian political scene has been consumed with speculation over whether Putin would permit a democratic transition of power at the end of his second term in 2008, when the constitution requires him to step down.
So far, much of the debate has centered on how Putin and those around him in the Kremlin will manage to remain in control — whether through amending the constitution or by designating an ally to take the reins in a managed election....
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-putin28sep28,0,5613459.story?coll=la-home-world
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